Sydney Harbor
by Rael Ellan
Summary: The thing is, they aren't together. Not the way that Ariadne and Arthur seem to think they are, with flowers and cuddles and romantic secret dates. Not even the way Eames thinks they are, furious and sultry and violent. In fact, when Dom thinks about it - really thinks about it - he doesn't think they're together at all.


For some inexplicable reason, on the same night every year, Dominic Cobb finds himself sitting in a small bar in Sydney, nursing a beer. People walk past, stare at each other through the window, wave or scowl, walk on by. Some people stare at him through the window. He forces himself to stare back.

Four years on, and he still finds himself ducking around corners to avoid police cars and turning up his coat collar to shield himself from the omniscient security cameras. It's not even deliberate, anymore, just gut reaction. 'It's a good thing', Arthur tells him when he phones from Amsterdam, from Paris, from Mombasa. 'It's just a good precaution.'

_A good precaution_, he thinks, only a little bitterly, _can be very embarrassing when walking your children to school._ But he didn't say that. Not to Arthur, anyway. Arthur, after all, hadn't been there when Dom had run into the man carrying the violin case. Arthur hadn't, in fact, been on the job with _The_ violin case, the one that deserved it's own italics, even in his head. Eames, he knew, would have been more sympathetic to his misery, but Eames was impossible for a civilian to find. 'Up to his old tricks', Arthur said when asked. Or, 'all tied up, as usual'.

A hand lands on his shoulder and he jerks around to face a man leaning heavily against the wall beside him. He gives Dom a once-over without bothering to make it subtle, and brushes a curl of dark hair out of his eyes.

"Oh, sorry, chère. I thought you were a friend of mine. My mistake." He makes to sit down, but evidently isn't drunk enough to ignore the way Dom's hand clenches around his glass. He turns away, sighing disappointedly, and casts a final invitation over his shoulder with a wink. "Well, if you get lonely brooding over there, I'll be happy to get to know you better. Bien, magnifique?"

Dom turns back to his beer, not entirely sure his sudden nausea is the result of the man's truly appalling pick up line.

A group of twenty, thirty, forty people enter the bar, and suddenly even Dom's shadowy little spot is crowded. Someone bashes into his arm and he waves off her braying apology magnanimously as her boyfriend hauls her away.

"It seems, Mister Cobb that now would be an appropriate time to leave."

After four years, Dom finds that he can't even bring himself to be surprised when Saito appears at his shoulder. He is smiling, coolly, calmly, and has Dom's coat – discarded earlier in a bid to cool off – draped over one arm.

He should be surprised. He should raise his eyebrows and say something like 'I'm sorry, have we met?' or, 'You should be in Osaka'. He never has been good at listening to his own advice.

"Seems like a good idea."

Together – Saito pushing through the crowd easily as they instinctively let him through and Dom occasionally having to shove and shuffle his way along – they head towards the door and emerge into the warm Sydney air. They turn and head towards the harbour, walking in tandem.

The silence isn't entirely comfortable. It's always impossible to know what Saito's thinking; he's an impossible man to pin down. He seems innocuous enough – if you're foolish enough to believe surface appearances – but Dom saw what he did to Cobol engineering.

"I was surprised to learn that you were still in Australia. Your job here was completed this morning. I had thought you would return to James and Philippa."

"No. I... They'll be OK for another day or two."

And that's it. His last chance to back away, to back off.

Tomorrow, he'll regret this. Ariadne will tease him when he asks her to help Miles for the extra few days he's away, and Eames he will text him a picture of a whip (or something more creative and far less metaphorical, like a web link, particularly if he's stolen Arthur's phone). Arthur, oddly, will say nothing. He'll just smile the next time they meet up and nod and ask about the kids.

Saito turns a corner, sharply, and their hands brush together. Dom twitches away, automatically, when he feels the small strip of cool metal on Saito's finger.

The thing is, they aren't together. Not the way that Ariadne and Arthur seem to think they are, with flowers and cuddles and romantic secret dates. Not even the way Eames thinks they are, furious and sultry and violent. In fact, when Dom thinks about it - really thinks about it - he doesn't think they're together at all.

"I have a small boat here. Would you care to – "

Champagne and music, alone together, on a boat in Sydney harbor. They sit so close that they can feel the heat off one another's bodies, but neither moves towards the other.

Instead, they sit, and feel the night air, and breathe.

And Dom, who has grown old once and aged twice, relaxes against the hard line of Saito's arm and enjoys, just for the moment, being a young man again.


End file.
